📚The Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' Book Group - All welcome to join📚

[Antarcticant]

Welcome to the Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' Book Group, where we will be reading and discussing fiction from the 1930s to the 1990s that would have been described as 'contemporary' in its day.

The best introduction to the 'rather dated' concept would be to read the wonderful thread which inspired this group:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4596284-rather-dated?reply=119670989

To summarise, a number of posters expressed disappointment that literature of the 20th Century is often dismissed as 'rather dated' because society has moved on from many of the values and lifestyles described.

We decided to create a reading group where the literary merits of such fiction can be appreciated, with any 'rather dated' elements being a point of interest rather than a reason to dismiss a novel.

We will be reading one book a month. Our first book, for September, will be the book that inspired the original thread:

The Road to Lichfield by Penelope Lively

Please do join the thread whether you want to take part in the discussion or just place mark to follow it.

Fellow Rather Dated people, please add anything important I might have missed!

(With huge thanks to ImJustMadAboutSaffron for the original thread and idea )

It’s been many years since I last read Black Narcissus, and I’ve seen the film much more recently, and frequently, so it was a pleasure to revisit the original (that poster is great btw, tobee).

I'd forgotten how vividly and colourfully Godden evokes everything - the landscape, the flowers, the amazing fabrics and textures of the young General's clothes, the plump cuddliness of the babies. It’s incredibly filmic and I can see how it was a gift for Powell & Pressburger. They ramped it up a bit but actually I think they stuck pretty faithfully to the book…bar making Sister Ruth more dramatically mad than she is in the novel.

Interestingly, Godden was ambivalent about the film, which she thought hadn’t portrayed the true intentions of the book. I feel she was definitely most interested in exploring how a small group of people react when they’re transplanted into an alien (to them) environment. The Greengage Summer is very much the same - a family of children marooned in a French hotel when their mother falls ill. I think she liked to see how much stress she could put her characters under, and how each of them would cope in their different ways. The added factor of them being nuns and closeted together in quite a claustrophobic environment made it more interesting to her, I think (she eventually converted to Catholicism and was always fascinated by nuns - she wrote another great book about a convent, In This House of Brede). And because she’d grown up in India, as Stella noted upthread, and had spent a lot of time living in the Himalayas herself, she knew how to make the setting authentic - though I completely agree it wouldn’t/couldn’t be written like that nowadays.

A hugely pleasurable read for me. It’s inspired me to dig out the biography of Godden which I’ve had sitting on my tbr pile for far too long.

Did you suggest Black Narcissus, Terpsichore? Thanks, if so :)

I also enjoyed the commentary on Mr. Dean's undone shirt and the 'indecent exposure' when it wasn't properly tucked in.

My eBay copy of the next book just arrived.

I went for this edition so I could get it as a Brookner job-lot with these . Actually 3 probably isn't a job lot but it's a good word.

Oh, they are marvellous toobe!
I'll start reading at the end of November. * *

Or I'll read it twice ;)

Do you think more people are going to comment on Black Narcissus?

(Stealthy bump)

I've only just started it... Not reading back so I don't see spoilers but will be commenting late!!

I'm not going to get around to it this month!

I'm reading it at the moment

Lovely descriptions of nature

I wanted to come back on and post a few more thoughts about BN now that I have a moment to do so.

I struggled to get into the book at first, and as others have said, found the dialogue difficult to follow at times. I also didn't feel that all the characters were as well developed as they might have been. Apart from with Sr. Clodagh and to some extent Sr. Ruth, the characters of the others felt a bit unknown to me. Perhaps that was the point.

Read as a commentary on the British colonial presence in India (I don't know if this is what RG intended) I found it fascinating (I teach some of this history). She showed how, even with the patronage of local elites like the General, in reality the colonial enterprise was often a failure. Certainly at the end, Sr. Clodagh feels that once they leave, Mopu will return to how it's always been, and the presence of the nuns and their interventions - the school, the clinic, the lace school - will quickly be forgotten. The suggestion seems to be that it was folly for them to have ever believed that they would have any impact.

In the end I really enjoyed the novel. As others have said, RG's evocations of the landscape were wonderful, and I came to appreciate her quite sparing approach.

I've made a start on A Start in Life and am enjoying it a lot so far.

I think that Clodagh and Ruth were the most interesting characters and were given most exposure accordingly. It was almost like a test for Clodagh as to whether she would succeed with this venture or not. Also, the difficult relationship between Clodagh and Mr. Dean was interesting for many reasons, but it was a pivotal point for Ruth's unhealthy obsession with him. The three of them were at the heart of the story, I think.

The three remaining nuns were like token nuns; the caring one who loves children (Blanche), the hard-working one (Philippa) and the medical one (Briony).
I thought that when Philippa asked for a transfer, it really was the time when the foundations became shaky and it signalled the beginning of the end.

Yes I completely agree that the tense relationships between Mr Dean, Clodagh and Ruth are at the heart of the story. The others are peripheral and to me felt quite one dimensional.

I finished this book

It was quite easy to read and very descriptive. I may try another of her books

I had seen the mini series in 2020 and it seemed close to the book but I seem to remember there was more action taking place at Mr Deans in the tv version

I did feel sorry for Kimchi, how she had to be a concubine and the Double standards

I think Rumer Godden conveyed very subtly that Sister Clodagh hadn’t been as successful as she thought in becoming an 'inspirational' nun. She entered the order out of pride when she realised that Con wasn’t going to marry her, and spent a long time wrestling with the horrible feeling that she’d made a mistake.

She thought those days of struggle were over, but they weren’t - she responded to Mr Dean, not necessarily on a sexual level, as Sister Ruth jealously thought, but as an intelligent equal. He recognised that in her; she instinctively knew it, and that’s why they clashed so much. She was afraid of what he could see in her: a human being with feelings, not the unquestioning nun she ought to have been. But all of that is shown with a light touch and gradually sketched in over the course of the narrative. I thought RG did it very intelligently.

Apologies for yet again bringing another Godden book into the discussion, but she explores similar themes in In This House of Brede, where her central character is a very successful businesswoman who leaves everything behind to join a Benedictine order of nuns.

I read something online about BN today which made me realise something I’d missed when I read the book. It was talking about the film (which I’ve not seen) but was relevant to the book as well. It was discussing the theme of the British nuns coming to this place that had been a place of sensuality and licentiousness and trying but failing to impose their order and values(that of church, and Britishness), and how that failure manifests in Clodagh suddenly remembering her lost love, Ruth falling in love with Mr Dean and the nun who was supposed to be doing the garden and planting sensible vegetables being unable to stop herself planting lush beautiful flowers. Like the place defeats them with its beauty and sensuality and otherness. It was interesting, I might watch the film now.

Yes, good point, Stella, absolutely. And arguably Mr Dean too - drinking and being ‘not a good man’ (the assumption being that he had ‘native’ women; they initially suspected that Kanchi was one of his cast-offs).

They all succumbed to the beauty of the place, as the brotherhood had before them, but nobody could articulate exactly why or how as it was so insidious.

The film really boosts the extraordinary glowing colours so you understand what is, for the nuns, an alien but ultimately seductive environment. Definitely see it if you can.

I think Clodagh conceded on one occasion that Mr. Dean wasn't a bad man. Her opinion of him changed over time or did it vary depending on the day and how much alcohol he had Imbued?!

It was interesting how immersed Dilip Rai became in British culture to the point of nearly ordering a suit for himself. Then the encounter with Kanchi happened and he gave it all up and reverted to his preordained role as heir. It became clear how he was going to live his life with Kanchi as his concubine.

Did they all get affected by the altitude

Very insightful and thought-provoking comments from everyone. I am going to try to track down the film, which I've not seen.

They must have been. They all sounded rather unwell by the end of the story; pale, thin, gaunt, over-tired and wrung out.

That's what I assumed.

This thread has made me buy a couple of books about understanding literature. Even though I did a degree in it 30 odd years ago, I feel like I need a brush up!

Yes, there were references to the thin, pure air making them all tired and breathless and slightly dazed. In chapter 6 - first of all they had to become acclimatised to living in the high altitude after months and years of the plains. After the first few days Sister Ruth was always complaining about her headaches; they all had them and felt listless and sick.

I’ve experienced altitude sickness in South America and I thought the book’s description of it was very accurate.

Thanks everyone for the comments, I’ve been really enjoying them.